To Leave Me
by Trmpetplaya1
Summary: He left her. She got blamed for it. So they made her leave too. When they meet up again, it's for reasons they can't even begin to explain. But they must fight. Not only for their sake, but for the sake of those they love. [SS]


To Leave Me…

Prologue

-----

_Why?_

She sat on the bed. Alone.

Green eyes that once sparkled like emeralds were dull, stained by the emotions held in her single word question.

_Why?_

_Why did you…have to…to…_

She burst out crying, unable to finish her thought. It wasn't the first time tears had interrupted her thought pattern.

And it would not be the last.

Hiding her face in her hands, she tried to calm herself down.

_In…out…in…out…_

_You cannot stop the past. You cannot stop the future. You can only live here, now. One breath at a time…in…out…in…_

…_out…_

When she felt calmer and her tears had evened out enough to let her see, she reached under her pillow for the only picture in her possession.

It had been taken the same day as the incident.

Wiping her eyes with her free hand, she studied the picture for the millionth time.

Two teenagers, one surprised and one blushing but both happy, stared back at her. The surprised set of eyes where amber brown and belonged to a messy haired, handsome teenager. His arms were loosely but protectively wrapped around a blushing girl with green eyes. The same green eyes that gazed forlornly at the picture. Except the warmth and joy radiating from the girl's eyes in the picture were not reflected in the green eyes of the observer.

Unable to take it any longer, the girl began crying again. It took all her effort to return the picture to its hiding place free of tear-stains.

Fifteen minutes later, she collapsed on top of the pillow exhausted, although the tears continued to flow and she cried herself to sleep.

-----

When she woke up later, the only vision to greet her was the dull gray walls of her prison cell.

She was confused for a moment.

But then she remembered…

-----

**The Past**

-----

"Syaoran-kun! Hey, Syaoran-kun! Wait up!"

The boy being called turned around. And the same brown eyes that had haunted her in the photograph now haunted her memory.

"Huh?"

He squinted as a green-eyed panting girl came running up to him.

"Oh, hey, you."

His tone of voice betrayed nothing, but those close to him knew that the twitches around the corners of his mouth meant that he was happy.

The girl, one Kinomoto Sakura, saw the tell-tale signs and grinned.

"Here."

She threw a package at him which he caught with ease.

He raised a brown eyebrow in surprise.

"What? Can't a friend give another friend a birthday present? Or is that a crime in China or something?"

Syaoran pretended to be offended at her remark and turned his back to leave.

"Hey! If you're going to get all huffy about it then at least give it back!"

He hesitated, but still kept his back to her.

"I mean, I wouldn't want to get in trouble with those crazy Chinese police or anything."

He turned around at that one.

"Who are you calling crazy?" both eyebrows were raised now, incredulous. "I will have you know that I am the heir to one of the – no! THE most powerful clan in all of China. I will not be insulted by the likes of…of you!"

Syaoran stepped toward her threateningly and it was Sakura's turn to look incredulous.

"But…I…I mean…I didn't mean…" she stammered, stepping back in confusion.

Her eyes closed half in fear, half because…well, she was backed up against a fence and a scary Li Syaoran was just that. Scary.

She felt him getting closer.

"…I just…wanted to give you…a present…" she choked out in a last attempt to console his Chinese pride.

He stopped.

She waited for something to happen, for him to hit her, yell at her, storm off, anything.

Silence. Breathing. In, out, in, out. Then…

"Gotcha."

Sakura's green eyes flew open to be met with the sight of a grinning Syaoran.

For him, grinning was the equivalent of normal people rolling on the ground laughing with the ingenious nature of their own prank.

But Li Syaoran wasn't "normal people".

Sakura sighed and rolled her eyes, but inside she was smiling like a maniac.

"Okay," he grinned in her direction a few more seconds before turning his attention to the package in his hands. "I'm done kidding around. What on earth could you have possibly gotten me?"

Blood rushed to her cheeks as Sakura suddenly felt very nervous and embarrassed.

"It's not much, really…"

She hoped he would like it. There was nothing more on this earth she valued right now than their friendship, save for her immediate family and Tomoyo.

They had confessed their feelings to each other at the end of his and his cousin Meiling's sudden trip to Japan after a literal rollercoaster ride of catching the final Clow Card. But that had been in elementary school, and he'd had to return to Hong Kong the following day, so their relationship, although it definitely existed, was undefined outside the "you like me, I like you" boundaries.

They had continued to stay in touch over the intermediate school years, but with his clan-specified top-secret training and her trying to stay on top of schoolwork, housework, and training in magic to keep her skills up, they found it hard to maintain anything more than a friendship. Although both sides fought to make sure that it was a stable friendship.

Then, having not received his monthly letter from March, she started high school on April 1st, which also happened to be her birthday. She was fidgety the first few minutes, only wanting the day to be over so that she could run home and check the mail to see if her best friend's letter had arrived yet. Tomoyo had noticed (of course) and told her with a secret smile to stop fidgeting, everything would be just fine.

She had nodded, still doubtful, when she heard the teacher say something about a new transfer student.

From Hong Kong.

Her head had shot up as the door slid open, and there he stood. A stoic Li Syaoron donned in the light blue blazer of Seijou High. He grunted to the class, a few had remembered him from the Tomoeda Elementary school days and smiled back, before walking to taking his seat behind Sakura, just like the old days. Before he reached the desk, he dropped an envelope on Sakura's desk.

"Happy 16th birthday," he whispered before sitting down.

After that, the two worked on their relationship, still uncertain about where they stood in terms of deeper feelings, but friends for sure.

And while she wasn't sure how he felt, heck, she wasn't even sure how _she_ felt, something in the pit of her stomach fluttered around and made her think _oh, I hope he likes it, I hope he likes it…_

The crumpling of paper and a grunt told her he had opened it.

She looked up.

He was surveying her now unwrapped present with a critical eye.

"Um…" she started, glancing at the item in his hands. "It really isn't much…I just thought…I mean…your old one looked…well, old…and…"

"Thank you."

It was amazing how much one phrase can mean to a person. And to Sakura his thanks meant the world.

Syaoran ran a hand over the embroidered yin-yang that lay in the center of the sword sheath she had given him.

"Did you make this yourself?"

"Yeah, well mostly," she admitted, blushing. "I couldn't get some of the stitches right at first so I had to ask my Dad to help, but other than that, yeah. I made it myself."

He smirked at her.

"I don't even want to know how long it took you to make this, since I know you're not good at making things by hand-"

She glared at him for that. Truth or not.

"-but thank you."

His smirked turned into a grin.

She scowled and then laughed at him.

"You cruel, mean…person!"

Sakura went to hit him playfully on the shoulder but he expertly stopped her hand with his.

They stayed frozen for a second with the shock of contact. While best friends, physical contact was hardly ever initiated by either party for fear of ruining a perfectly good friendship.

Slowly, they lowered their arms, hands still in place. And just like that, they were holding hands. The two blushed furiously but neither made a move to let go.

"Um…" it was Syaoran's turn to stutter now, "you, uh, wanna go get something to eat, or whatever…?"

"Sure, that sounds – "

A sudden crash from behind them made them both jump and Syaoran protectively threw his arms around Sakura before turning around.

"Oh dear. Just when it was so nice and cozy," came the voice of Sakura's closest female friend.

"Tomoyo-chan?!"

"Daidouji-san?"

The long-haired, pale-skinned Daidouji Tomoyo stepped out from behind the trash cans where she was hiding, dutifully clutching her video recorder in both hands.

"Ah, but if only my dear accomplice hadn't decided to make such a racket."

A yellow blur flew out from behind her.

"I didn't _mean_ to make a racket, y'know, but I just couldn't help myself!" the small yellow bear-like thing with wings spoke. "I mean, who in their right minds would ever through out a perfectly good copy of Tekken 2! That's classic fighting gaming goodness right there!"

"You brought the stuffed animal along, Daidouji-san, fantastic."

"The name is Kerberos, guardian beast of the seal, kiddo."

"Who you callin' kiddo?!"

Syaoran and the 'beast' glared at each other.

"Hey, Li-kun!" called Tomoyo, "say 'cheese'!"

"What?"

Click.

----

**a/n:** For reasons unknown to even myself, I have decided to revive this fic of mine. Those reasons probably have something to do with the fact that I recently watched all 70 episodes and both movies of CCS after stumbling across them on youtube, but we may never know. All I do know for sure is that this story is in desperate need of a rehaul.

Which is what I am now in the process of doing.

I really like where I was going with this story, but my writing style sucked back in the day. I cringe every time I have to read the old stuff to edit it, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

There are a few things I want to clear up though. (Feel free to ignore the following.) First of all, I'm taking out all the random Japanese that I used before. I find that it interrupts the flow of the story, especially if readers don't know what the random words mean. I did decide, however, to stick with several Japanese practices, such as listing family names first, addressing people by their first name only on close relationship basis, using suffixes such as '-san' and '-chan' for people's names, etc. in order to maintain a feeling of status and trying to stay true to the feel of the original work.

I realize this is hard, seeing as it is originally done in Japanese and there are some things that have no English equivalent, but I hope you'll bear with me.

I'm also basing this off the anime ending, not the manga ending mainly because I haven't read the manga ending (although I know it; dang spoilers…).

Oh, and unless Syaoran's feeling particularly 'special' towards Sakura, he's just going to call her 'you' or 'that girl' like in the anime and manga.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. I'll try to clear them up as best I can.

Thank you!

Trmpetplaya1


End file.
